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FILM;A Writer Who Means Norway to Movie Makers

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SOME NOVELS LEND THEMSELVES to screen adaptation so easily, it is as if they had been written with that intention. There is no demon interior monologue; all is action, dialogue and plenty of dramatic tension to smooth the path. Not so with movies based on books by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, movies like "Hunger" and "Pan," which will be shown starting Friday at the Museum of Modern Art in the series "Hamsun on Film," which runs through Nov. 15.

Knut Hamsun, who lived from 1859 until 1952, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920, and influenced writers like Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, James Joyce, Henry Miller and the contemporary American novelist Paul Auster.

Isaac Bashevis Singer went so far as to say, "The whole modern school of fiction in the 20th century stems from Hamsun." He called Hamsun "the father of the modern school of literature in every respect -- his subjectiveness . . . his use of flashbacks, his lyricism."

Robert Bly, the author of "Iron John: A Book About Men" and the writer who most recently translated Hamsun's best-known novel, "Hunger," into English, views Hamsun as an "inward astronomer," whose books chart the rising and falling moods, ideas and impulses of his central characters. This is not easy to capture on film.

Hamsun did not care about the difficulty of adapting works like his to film. "I don't understand film, and I am in bed with the flu," he responded when asked in the 1920's to give his opinion of cinema.

So it is paradoxical that at least 15 movies have been based on his work, making him the most filmed Norwegian author after Henrik Ibsen. Film makers go back to his books, lured by the beauty of his words and stories or by the challenge the novels present.

Although his books have been translated into 30 languages and France (where he lived when he wrote parts of "Pan") has an annual Hamsun Day, with seminars and exhibitions, he is little read or appreciated in the United States. And his history of sympathizing with the Nazis makes such an appreciation more difficult. During the German occupation of Norway from 1940 to 1945, Hamsun shocked his countrymen with his support of the Third Reich. After liberation he was tried for treason and forced to undergo psychiatric examination. His fortune was confiscated by the Norwegian Government.

"People still read Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats with a great deal of passion," Mr. Auster said. "One has to admit that they are first-class writers, despite their politics." Mr. Auster is a fan of Mr. Hamsun's earliest books, "Hunger" and "Mysteries," written before the Norwegian author's support of Nazism.

In any case, it is surprising that when a group of American and Norwegian institutions began planning a wide-ranging festival in New York on Norwegian culture, Jytte Jensen, the assistant curator for film and video at the Museum of Modern Art, decided to represent the cinematic contribution of Norway with an "all eggs in one basket" series of films based on Hamsun.

Ms. Jensen, who is Danish, said the museum had never had a Norwegian movie series. In her research on Norwegian cinematic history, she recalled, "the films that really stayed with me were the Hamsun films."

She later learned that Henning Carlsen, a leading Danish director, was working on a movie version of Hamsun's "Pan," 30 years after his award-winning version of "Hunger," and that the museum would have the chance to present the new film's American debut.

Ms. Jensen was pleased that the Hamsun films offered a concise film history of Norway, not only because they represent the continuum of Norwegian film but also because several Hamsun novels have been made into films more than once. There are four versions of "Pan," for instance, and two of "Dreamers."

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A stunningly beautiful hand-tinted version of "Growth of the Soil," a silent film from 1921, will be shown. But the highlight of the series will be the two Carlsen films. "Hunger" (1966) is the story of a starving writer's demise in 1890's Oslo. Mr. Carlsen's new film, "Two Green Feathers," which is based on "Pan," is a tragic tale of unrequited love between a hunter and an upper-class girl. "Two Green Feathers" will open the series on Friday.

Mr. Carlsen's "Hunger" is considered by most critics to be the best of the Hamsun movies, because of its close parallels with the novel. In a telephone interview from his home in Copenhagen, Mr. Carlsen said, "I never intended to come back to Hamsun, after 'Hunger' 30 years ago." But he was fascinated with Hamsun's characters and intrigued by the challenge of bringing a book like "Pan," which he called "one big poem," to the screen. (Mr. Carlsen and Mr. Auster will speak about Hamsun on Nov. 13 at New York University in a public lecture that is part of the Norwegian festival.)

"His characters are so faceted, so complex," Mr. Carlsen said. "They are not like the major characters in American film. They are three-dimensional and unpredictable. You can't foresee what they're going to do next. You can't anticipate what will come out of their mouths in the next sentence. They all share an ambivalence that fascinates me."

"In most American films," he continued, "the characters are archetypes, cartoons. Maybe that's why American films have such a broad audience: you don't have to work so hard. They're easier to sit through."

The experience of watching "Hunger" is as painful as the protagonist's plight. But it was well received critically, and won a best actor award at Cannes for Per Oscarsson. It still has many fans.

One is the screenwriter and actor Buck Henry. "Henning Carlsen made an amazing movie out of a book almost no director ever would have gone near," Mr. Henry said. " 'Hunger' stands as a reference point for films of that nature. It's intensely private, dark, moving, and I suspect it helped keep the reputation of Hamsun alive through the years."

It was a chance viewing of "Hunger" in Paris in 1967 that led Mr. Auster to read Hamsun's work. He later included an essay on Hamsun in his master's thesis at Columbia University, an essay that was reworked into "The Art of Hunger," published by Penguin in 1992.

Like many Hamsun fans, Mr. Auster was drawn to the male protagonist. All of Hamsun's men, he said, are "romantic outsiders who just don't know how to act -- James Deans, before he was ever heard of."

"They are ferociously intelligent, painfully self-conscious, passionate, ambitious and yet completely inept," he continued, "unable to negotiate the simplest transaction without tying themselves up in knots. Their behavior appears erratic and impenetrable. Very few writers have the patience to track all these little shifts."

Hamsun's women are equally fascinating, for their ambivalence toward men and their unrestricted sexual aggressiveness.

For his part, Mr. Auster is not surprised that there have been so many films based on Hamsun. "Look how many Shakespeare movies there have been, or even F. Scott Fitzgerald," he said. "It's because these great writers touch something in the culture that people want to keep exploring. You can't ever use up a great writer."

A version of this article appears in print on November 5, 1995, on Page 2002019 of the National edition with the headline: FILM;A Writer Who Means Norway to Movie Makers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe